


The Color of Angst

by thequidditchpitch_archivist



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Action/Adventure, Alternate Universe, Angst, Dark, Drama, Explicit Language, Friendship, Post-Hogwarts, The Quidditch Pitch: Leaving Feast, Tragedy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2006-05-25
Updated: 2006-05-25
Packaged: 2018-10-26 15:21:34
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,506
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10789344
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thequidditchpitch_archivist/pseuds/thequidditchpitch_archivist
Summary: A trio of short stories exploring anguish through particular shades and different relationships. MT rating for language and implied m/m relations. Set within my "Together, Alone" universe. Harry/Draco, Molly Weasley, and Remus/Sirius.





	The Color of Angst

**Author's Note:**

> Note from Annie, the archivist: this story was originally archived at [The Quidditch Pitch](http://fanlore.org/wiki/The_Quidditch_Pitch), which went offline in 2015 when the hosting expired, at a time I was not able to renew it. I contacted Open Doors, hoping to preserve the archive using an old backup, and began importing these works as an Open Doors-approved project in April 2017. Open Doors e-mailed all authors about the move and posted announcements, but may not have reached everyone. If you are (or know) this creator, please contact us using the e-mail address on [The Quidditch Pitch collection profile](http://archiveofourown.org/collections/thequidditchpitch/profile).

  
Author's notes:

Summaries for each of the three ficlets:

**Red is for Remorse** : Harry/Draco. Post-War.

**White is for Witness** : Molly Weasley says her goodbyes to Fred.

**Blue is for Betrayal** : Remus/Sirius. Marauder-era.   


* * *

**Red Is For Remorse**

"Exposure," he hears. His whole body pulses with pain, and Draco wonders how long it's been since the last _Cruciatus_. Not long enough. Even his teeth are throbbing. Without opening his eyes, he tentatively slides his tongue into what should be the sacred space of his mouth. He meets wriggling and cracked front teeth.

Overwhelmed by nausea, bright with his jostling joints, as he's hauled away from the frigid surf in someone's arms, Draco passes out. But not before something registers in his mind.

Red.

 

***

 

"I'm not your charity case, Potter!" Draco is several degrees beyond furious, well on to livid. "I'm a turncoat to my family, and after this investigation I don't ever want to hear from you again. I'm sick of seeing you like this, acting like some bloody Muggle saint."

Potter looks at him, a twinge of pity in his gaze.

"Oh fucking Merlin," Draco seethes. "You do think you're a saint. You fulfilled your prophecy and now you can save all of the cursed pieces of flotsam still bobbing after the War, and assuage yourself."

He runs his tongue across the back of his magically replaced teeth, knowing them as foreigners. "You didn't find me, anyway. It was a Weasley, unless you were in disguise."

Draco pours wine down his throat and straightens his spine, wincing a bit. The damage inflicted on him will remain for some time to come. Forever, most likely. He glares at Potter, who exhales heavily through his nose, as though his very breath is language.

Seconds later Draco throws up his hands as a blinding aura bursts from across the room, vibrant scarlet pouring from Potter, a demonstration of- something. Draco forces his hands down from his eyes, squinting at the young man who has willed himself to become what the wizarding world asked of him: He has become their Saviour.

"Okay. Impressed. Please turn it off," Draco chokes out.

The room is instantly dim, and cold.

"Why'd you care, anyway?" Draco asks.

"I didn't," Potter replies, absently adjusting his glasses. "George found you. He was part of the reconnaissance group investigating different Malfoy estates and enterprises. He and Snape were as shocked to find you at Port Ness as you were to be found, I reckon."

Draco allows the barrage of words to stick, nettle-like, into his consciousness. They prickle there for a bit.

"So it wasn't you-" he begins.

"Nope," Potter says cheerfully. "George Weasley and Severus Snape. Snape's dead now, as you know, but George's still around. Care to see him?"

"No," Draco grouses, then extends his arm. "More wine?"

 

***

 

He doesn't feel trapped, exactly, when Potter's fingers massage into his upper back, the digits dripping with pine-scented oil. Yet another gesture of piety. The trial is going on and on. Lucius would never have allowed for such a travesty, but he, too, is dead. Draco is an orphan. Though that word is reserved for children, he decides. He's an adult. He is simply alone in this New Post-Voldemort World, with no parents, no siblings, and no friends, since Vincent and Gregory were both summarily executed for being loyal to him.

He flinches at the memory.

"Sorry, Draco," he hears, and feels the sense of red vibrating around him. "Did I hurt you?"

"No, it wasn't you."

He shivers a bit under the intimate proximity when Potter leans over him and breathes into his ear, "Good. I couldn't bear that."

Unacceptable arousal centers in his groin and Draco admonishes himself to relax.

 

***

 

He is relatively unsurprised when he wakes up with the prickling sensation of being watched.

"Bored, Potter?" Draco drawls before his brain manages to catch up to his mouth. It's early, pre-dawn, and he's in Potter's bed. He's rather unwilling to move and find out whether or not he's clothed.

"Hardly."

Draco closes one eye and looks at Potter through the other. His aura is dim now, but pulsing as though synchronised with his heartbeat.

"Did you slip something into that oil and fuck me while I was asleep?"

Potter grins wickedly. "D'you wish I had?"

Running his hand through his long fringe, Draco considers the question.

"Yes, but I'd rather be awake. If it's all the same to you, of course."

The room is suddenly sanguine-drenched.

 

***

 

There are no shortage of gasps and titters at the funeral when Draco reads his poem, but he pays them no heed. Afterwards he meets George Weasley and Remus Lupin at some bar called the Selkie's Swim and joins them in their misery.

"Bloody fucking Death Eaters," George slurs, then bats at Draco's hand. "Not you, of course."

"Yes, fucking me, of course!" Draco spits back. "Why'd you and Snape go all the way out to Lewis to retrieve my body, anyway?"

"Had to," George says plainly. "Can't say as I was especially looking forward to it; seemed nasty business and we'd just lost MacLeod to illness a few days before and it all seemed bollocky stupid."

Draco sits in dumbfounded silence, taking a long pull of his pint. He's quite sure he's never heard George Weasley say so much at once in his life. It's unsettling.

"I'm so sorry about Harry," Lupin says, eyes bright with sorrow and regret.

"Not half as much as I am," Draco replies. "Then again," he continues, the hearty brew chorusing in his veins, "seeing as I'm so fucking sorry, I wish you hadn't rescued me," he gestures at the befuddled freckle-covered face, "and I'd been left, exposed to wind and rain and fucking midges. Pain and death. Not a problem. Now heartache- nobody taught me how to deal with that."

In his most dignified manner, he drains his glass.

"George, I'm sorry about Fred. Lupin, I'm sorry about… whatever."

"Black," Weasley offers. "And being a bloody werewolf."

"Fine, fine," Draco says magnanimously. "And now, as much I've enjoyed your company, this pity party must come to an end. There's something Potter would have wanted me to do."

Draco gets up from the table and streamlines through the crowd in the bar and out the door. In the alleyway, he takes several deep breaths, then Apparates to his small flat.

There, waiting for him, are several cans of crimson paint, and a roller brush. This is to be done by hand, at a slow, deliberate pace as he sinks into solitary mourning. He places the one picture Harry allowed them to get during their brief time together on the table next to his bed, then puts on some less-haughty clothes from his successful win at the War Trials.

He begins painting.

 

**: :~: :**

**White is for Witness**

Molly sits alone in the room, staring at the sheet-draped pallet in front of her. It's white. Everything's white. Walls, lights, even the robes of the healer in the portrait hanging opposite her. It's far too sterile, too blank- much too clean for such dirty business as the war that has brought her here.

She's waved Bill and Charlie along, and Ron and Percy as well. Arthur she coaxed on to Ginny, though her only daughter didn't want to leave and stood, weeping silently, clutching at her hand.

"Just leave us for a few, dear," she'd said, voice in check, but calming, she'd hoped. It was taking a lot out of her to manage to be as stalwart as she pretended she was. "Even your father can manage tea and biscuits until I come home."

When it was just the three of them, herself, George, and Fred's body, George broke down. She'd never had to hold him like that, one of her jovial twins reduced to a wretched, sobbing wreck. He railed, and swore and punched a small hole into the wall at St. Mungo's. Then he climbed onto the bed with his unmoving twin, rested his head on Fred's shoulder, pushed some hair out of his closed eyes, and murmured something Molly couldn't hear.

"I'll find something to say for the funeral," he'd said once he'd readied himself to leave, wiping gracelessly under his nose with a shirtsleeve. "Poem or somesuch. Come on, let's go. He wouldn't want us moping."

She'd looked at him, so diminished without his brother as none of her other children would be on their own, red eyes still leaking tears that he no longer bothered to check.

"I need just a moment, George," she'd said quietly, pulling him to her and enfolding him in an embrace. "You go on- I won't be long. But I'm his mother. I know you were dreadfully close, but I birthed him, and I need to say a proper farewell."

George had wilted, sinking to his knees and clutching her around the waist. "How can you be so calm?" he sniffled into her jumper. "It's all so fucking wrong."

She'd held him, absorbing his grief like a sponge taking water. After a bit, he'd reined himself in, stood up, and kissed her on the cheek. "Don't stay long, please," he pleaded, as she'd held his hands and then watched him leave the room.

Now she sits, fingering a heart-shaped locket with Fred and George's pictures inside, aged six or so. She knows she can't bear to open it, so she doesn't.

She starts when the door opens, and a Junior Assistant Healer walks in, then stops suddenly.

"Oh. I'm so sorry," he stumbles over the words. "I'd thought you'd all gone. I was just going to move the body-"

"May I have just a few minutes, please?" she asks, and he nods, retreating. "I'll come and get you on the way out. You're at the desk at the end of the corridor, correct?"

He nods more vigorously.

"Right, then."

The door closes.

Molly's not much of a drinker, but she also hasn't expected to lose her fourth-youngest child quite yet. The incident with the bloody boggart last year had been enough for her to know she wasn't ready to go through this. Certainly not with the twins, who'd had no enemies. She unscrews the ivory flask, a parody Christmas gift from Charlie, admiring the dragon carving that adorns the exterior. Then she drinks the contents.

As she places it back in her handbag, she rummages around for the other item she's brought to put with Fred through the night. Not that he needs it, as he's-

Well, she can't quite say the word yet, it's far too foreign, not one she can force herself to utter. It's much too monosyllabic and permanent. Soon, as soon as she leaves this pale, pristine sanctuary, there will be affairs to settle, plans to be made, notices to be sent on creamy parchment: 'Your presence is respectfully requested…' She imagines her hand writing those words, then shakes her head.

Molly finds the embroidered linen, and pulls it gingerly from her bag. _'FXW'_ glows in luminous thread at one corner. In her family, anyway, it's tradition that the matriarch, in this case, her great-great aunt, sews the initials of each child onto a delicate cloth, given initially at their naming ceremony, but then handed on at an appropriate rite of passage, usually marriage.

More rarely, it's at a funeral.

She opens the handkerchief and places the locket at its centre, then forces herself up from the chair. It's only a few steps to the bed, and she crosses the room until she's standing next to her son. His face is thinner than she remembers, but she hadn't seen him for several weeks prior to the attack on their shop, and Death Eaters aren't known for making gourmet meals for their hostages.

She can't bear it anymore, and knows that if she doesn't do this quickly, she will splinter open; rage and fear and her very sanity will shatter blindingly into the room, and all that the junior healer will find is the broken, beloved body of her dead son, Frederick Xavier Weasley, and her spirit flickering about it like diamond shards.

She bends over and tucks the fabric-enclosed locket into his hands, kisses his forehead, and walks to the door.

**: : ~ : :**

**Blue is for Betrayal**

"Nice suit, Moony!"

Remus ducks back into the doorframe. A wolf-whistle greets him, courtesy of Sirius, bare feet splayed on the table, a newspaper in his hands and his chair back leaned against the atrociously-patterned cornflower blue wallpaper. His low-slung pyjamas bottoms reveal an indecent trail of black hair that points infernally toward his groin.

Remus takes a deep breath, then exhales. "When are you going to get a bloody job?" he asks in as scolding a voice he can manage given that his eyes are drawn inexorably toward Sirius's lap.

"All in good time, Moony, all in good time." Sirius drops his wide feet and the chair legs to the lino floor with loud _thwump!_ ing sounds. "Blue's a good colour for you. Should wear it more often."

Remus runs his fingers down the too-wide lapel of the secondhand jacket. "It's navy." He sniffs at a sleeve. "And crap."

"Navy is blue. And nothing is crap if you're wearing it," Sirius says, winking at him and taking a sip of coffee, a new habit he's picked up since they've been in London. Which strikes Remus as odd, because Sirius has always seemed like such a tea kind of bloke. But perhaps coffee goes better with cigarettes, another habit Sirius has picked up, as though he's nothing but a magnet for anything except endeavours which actually earn money.

"Flattery will get you buggered," Remus warns, pretty sure Sirius is mostly paying attention to his crossword puzzle.

"Buggered, eh?" Sirius takes a deep drag on the cigarette. Remus looks at the pack on the table, the turquoise concentric circles diminishing like a bulls-eye under the plastic wrapper.

"Didn't think you were listening. Yes, well, if you're lucky." Remus adjusts his tie and gives Sirius a wry smile. "'Course, you're the luckiest chap I know."

"No, that's you." Sirius grins, his eyes the colour of a summer-lit loch. "Get to be with me."

Remus makes a retching noise. "Merlin, I swear I've never met anyone with an ego like yours. Good thing you have other redeeming aspects to your personality."

"Such as?" Sirius, all lake-eyes and beckoning y-shaped chest hair, leans on the table.

_Can't, can't, must go to work._ Remus wills his desire to wane. "Tell you later, if you've cleaned up the flat," Remus says, levering away from the doorway.

"You'll tell me anyway!" echoes gleefully in his ears as he trots down the stairs and into the bustling streets.

The sun is shining in a painfully clear cerulean sky, and Remus Lupin is happy. It's a banner day, and all he's done is managed not to shag Sirius senseless quite yet and gone off to work. Not bad for eight-thirty, considering.

 

***

 

A couple of years pass. Remus is both surprised and incredulous when Sirius suggests that they go to a club. The war has escalated and they're both entrenched in their respective pursuits for the Order and occasional babysitting duties for James and Lily, who continue to offer assistance as much as possible given their new infant.

"Oh, c'mon," Sirius pleads from Remus' side, where he's planted himself after pushing Remus' report down. "Muggle place called The Lagoon. Supposed to have wicked drinks and a pretty decent band. We never do anything anymore."

"There's a war on, Sirius."

"Yes, but we're not dead yet, are we?" He's scraping at the label on his empty ale bottle, nestled between his knees. Sacrificial aqua shreds fall, confetti-like, on to his pants.

"If that's supposed to be a joke, it's pretty bloody poor." Remus picks his report back up, then in an abrupt change of heart, decides that as crassly as it was worded, Sirius has a point.

"Never mind," Sirius says, sulking. He brushes the paper bits to the floor.

"No, you're right, Pads. Let's go. I'll just go change trousers."

"Really?" Sirius' pale eyes light up. "Brilliant, Moony. I even know of an Apparating point near it. And I'll shout the first round."

Remus smiles at Sirius' exuberance. He's almost forgotten how the expression transforms Sirius's already handsome face to positively devastating. "You're quite a looker," Remus says, raising his hand to stroke the shadowed cleft of Sirius' chin, a couple of days of shaving oversight becoming noticeable.

"You're no eyesore either," Sirius rumbles, placing his hand so his fingers curve dangerously near Remus' groin.

Remus wonders if this is an invitation. They don't do this as often, as the constant threat of danger has dulled the edge of their libidos. "Sirius?" Remus questions, gauging the potential in the blue eyes. A thumb runs over the low swell below his belt as Sirius leans in.

"Very serious," Sirius breathes hotly on to Remus' lips.

The excursion to The Lagoon is delayed.

 

***

 

The scalding water isn't purging enough, so Remus switches it to cold. He tries to bear it as long as possible, but he's shocked into far too much sensation, skin screaming with the rapid change. He wrenches off the water and stands, shivering in the shower, teeth beginning to chatter. Instinctively his arms are clasped across his chest, trying to conserve as much heat as possible.

It's simply too much and he barely makes it to the toilet before he vomits, bashing his ankle on the upper edge of the tub in his haste. His muscles contract again and again as he expels what little food he's eaten until he's wilted over the bowl as the dry heaving subsides.

Once he feels strong enough, he pushes away from the porcelain, his center of gravity clinging desperately somewhere behind his navel as he fumbles his way up the wall and pulls at the chain, and the loo flushes. Unsurprisingly there's a foul taste in his mouth, so he scoots tentatively over to the sink and turns on the tap, cupping his hands under the flow of water. He rinses, and spits.

It's a few moments later, or hours, it's hard to say which, when he sits at their - at his - kitchen table. Remus wears old tracksuit pants, an undershirt, a plaid flannel monstrosity that he can't quite place and at this time, he really doesn't have the memory reserve to delve into his mind and remember the shirt's origin in his world. He idly traces the midnight blue track in the plaid, clinging to anything that is stable, and angular, and -

Oh Merlin. Everywhere he looks, he sees him. Feels him. Senses him. Smells him.

Whimpering, Remus caves onto the table, the back of his head covered by his hands, forehead resting on the stained, smooth surface. James and Lily - dead. Harry - alive, but confiscated by Dumbledore, of all people. Peter - dead. Sirius -

His stomach begins to roil again, and Remus knows that now is not the time to think of how long Sirius must have planned, how many nights he slept innocently, one arm flung over Sirius's waist, the other clasped under his pillow, Sirius all angles and elbow jutting against goldenrod of morning or soft greyshadow of night; Sirius shut it all out. He hated being woken up.

Remus gets up unsteadily from the table and pours himself a generous heaping of misery manifested as bourbon. He drinks it, pours a bit more, knowing he'll be sick again, later, but he's clever and he warded the flat because while he's reassured beyond belief that Harry's still alive, he's lost his packmate, who was a liar and he's loved someone who was a stranger and going off to…

Az.

Ka.

Ban.

Remus softly pounds his head against the table.

Blue eyes and wicked grin and 'What could this be, Moony?' as he does the crosswords and he fucks so tenderly and with intimate everything and -

Remus needs to focus on something. Anything. A pack of matches with a pond printed on the outside beckons to him from across the table. He pulls the box to him, sitting upright. The Lagoon. They were there, a few weeks ago, but it could have been a decade. He pulls out a match, stares disbelievingly at the wood with its blue tip, and is hazily surprised when it bursts into flame. He's done wandless magic before, but not unintentionally. He licks his fingers and puts out the match and drops it to the floor. Staring at his hand, which doesn't seem to belong to him, he takes out another match, stares at it, and thinks. It bursts into bright blue, then flickering red flame. He holds it, then drops it to the floor, not bothering to put it out. Again and again, he lights the matches and tosses them to the ground.

Flames begin to lick greedily up the blue wallpaper as he walks unsteadily out of the flat.


End file.
